Newgy Robo-Pong 1050

Newgy Robo-Pong 1050

This is one of the latest Newgy robots! This is one smart robot. Revolutionary digital controls mean easy, exact regulation of ball speed, wait time, and landing spot. Normal Mode gives you simple manual control over each function. In Drill Mode, run any of the 64 drills stored on the controller. Use PC Mode to create and save drills using a simple interface, then run those drills direct from your PC. Setup Mode lets you calibrate motors to a set standard and select your desired language. Intelligent design allows selection of favored hand so drills run correctly for either right-handers or left-handers. Or tell your robot to throw balls for 5 minutes, and it will automatically calculate how many balls will be thrown in that time.

Listen to what top player Samson Dubina has to say: “After training with the Canadian Olympic Team for 3 years, I know what a effective training session consist of. The Robo-Pong 2050 can perform nearly every drill that a 2500 training partner can perform.”

The Robo-Pong 1050 is identical in every way to the 2050 except it doesn’t have the Recycling Net System. Purchase the inexpensive Ball Catch Net separately for ball capture and manual recycling. Or later on, upgrade to full 2050 capabilities with the Recycling Net Upgrade Kit. The 1050’s Ball Bucket holds 200 balls for several minutes of non-stop play. Position the robot anywhere on top of table or mount it in our optional Robo-Caddy to get a variety of angles and trajectories. Retrieve stray balls quickly and easily with the optional Pong-Pal.

Specifications For Robot Pong 1050

Spins

Topspin, backspin, left sidespin, right sidespin, combination spins

Shot Selection

Push, chop, serve, drive, lob, fast loop

Head Angle

Adjust from low (serves) to high (lobs)

Power Source

Australian Standard

Set-Up & Take Down

Quick and easy set-up and take down take less than 5 minutes.
No assembly or tools required.

Compatibility

Can be used on all known commercial table tennis tables

Remote Control

Convenient control box enables quick adjustments without stopping play

Warranty

Limited one-year warranty. Parts available worldwide.

ITEM

540

2040

1050

Balls per minute, max.

63

94

170

Balls per minute, min.

13

26

1.2

Ball speed (MPH), max.

70

65

65

Ball speed (MPH), min.

<10

<10

<10

Robot-Pong 1050 Package Includes:

Ball Thrower (w/Oscillation)

Ball Bucket

Bucket Extender Cage

Full Size Digital Control Box

Transformer

Connector Cable

Owner’s Manual

Set-up DVD

Carton Size 65 x 38 x 32cm

Carton Weight 6kg

NOTE: Balls NOT included

Newgy Robots come with a standard 1 year limited Australian warrantee.

Reviews:

Review by pushchop (published with permission)Seems like nobody has written any reviews on the Newgy 1050, so I’ll write one. First real post of mine on this board, so hi!

Where to start? I’ve had mine for 1 month. First off, it’s a digital control pad. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s still a single-wheel design, so no-spin balls are not possible. However, since it’s only 395 USD, the benefit to your footwork from the programmable DRILL mode completely overshadows any shortcomings.

Let me start by saying I have only played on one other robot — the AMDT TW2700-06 (dual-wheel no-spin model), so my point of reference is limited.

<1) NORMAL mode. You can configure random oscillation and/or random speed. This is as close to a random hitting partner you can get without spending 2k USD for dual-headed robot that can shoot back-to-back topspin/backspin shots to you. You have to decide up front whether to drill in topspin mode or backspin mode. And since spin is dependent on speed, long balls are always high spin, and short balls are always low spin. And amount of sidespin is also chosen at beginning of drill. So it’s not perfect. But who cares? It was $395.

2) DRILL mode. This is where the 1050 shines. I do easy falkenberg drills using drill mode (half table movements, not full table width, I’d die). There are 64 pre-programmed drills, and the upper 32 drills are really tough (like end-to-end falkenberg and slash drills), talk about sore legs trying to do that. DRILL mode is very flexible. You can adjust speed and frequency of balls for any drill. For example, I might use the same drill to practice FH at ball freq of 1.3 balls per sec. But when I practice FH chopping, I set to 3.0 secs to give my chop reasonable time to get back on table before next ball shoots.

3) Quality of robot and maintenance. Very high quality. My only worry are the plastic fingers that bring the balls from bucket up to shooting head. Otherwise, seems well made. I get one ball jam every 2000-4000 balls. It’s usually caused by dirty balls. So you do need to wash your balls (no pun intended) every 2 wks, and wipe off dirt from friction block + throw wheel, just to keep things smooth.

4) Catch net. Why not buy the 2050? It comes with recyling net? Yes, the 2050 is great for lazy people, but at $795 it was not in my budget. The Catch Net II is $80 including side nets. Works great, has funnel in net for easy reloading of balls. 1050 can hold 200 balls. But a bonus of the 1050 is the versatility — think about this — most recycling net robots can only shoot balls from middle of table. They cannot shoot down-the-line shots or shoot full cross court shots. The 1050 can. And you can use it to simulate Joo Hse Hyuk chopping at you by placing it 15 ft back from table with backspin. Smile I can’t think of any recycling robot that can do this.

5) Noise. It’s a lot quiter than I thought. The left/right oscillation is silent. The only noise comes from the spinning wheel and shooting of the ball. Problem is you get no visual hints on speed since the robot has no paddle. But, you do hear the wheel spinning faster/slower, so you have an equivalent hint audibly. But the sidespin? Holy smokes, completely blindsided since there’s no hint at all.

Continued:
I initially was concerned that the single wheel design would limit the 1050’s usefulness. And that is still Newgy’s weakness.

The 2050 controller is identical to the 1050. It’s actually a 9-pin D-SUB serial connector. The only reason they call it a “USB/serial” interface is some laptops don’t have serial ports, so you’d need a USB<->serial converter. Their Robo-Soft software is pretty smart — it automatically probes until it finds the controller. Nifty.

I must say the programmable drills are awesome on the 1050/2050. You should download the user manual from their website and check out drills 1-64. Drills 33-64 are user programmable. My thinking is if you are intermediate player, the 1050/2050 will be just fine. For advanced level players who requires practice against no-spin balls, dual wheels is a must. But I solve this problem simply by training on the 1050 for 80% of my time for topspin/backspin/sidespin, and practicing with hitting partner who plays pips-out the other 20%, hehe.

In terms of the built-in drills, I like the falkenberg drills (for footwork) and forward slash drills (to simulate defending against 3rd ball attack: robot serves you short ball to right, you move forward and push, robot smashes one long left, you shuffle fast and block).

In terms of just specific training, I like practicing smashing against chops, flipping short balls, and close-to-table blocking. You will be amazed how just these three things will turn your games around. When you’re not worrying about how to perform these moves, you can focus on strategy. i.e. when I smash against chop, I’m not thinking about how to do it — I’m thinking about where to land the ball. 🙂

I hooked up my PC to the controller a few days ago, and ran the Robo-Soft program to program my own drills. It is so easy to do, it’s insane. And if you screw up, no fear. The software has a “revert to factory defaults” option.

One thing I just realized this week is that the Newgy controller has a Language setting that displays Chinese, Swedish, Spanish, French, German, etc. I had no idea they had translated to every language.

Review by hitman21 April 2010
Definitely a must buy for a serious player…otherwise why bother? 75 mph is a max speed so they say, and with random oscillation, top spin, back spin, side spin and combinations of those make each drill exciting…along with adjustable angle to get lob drills in! there are 64 drills in this easy to use pad and various ways to adjust to your skill level! worth the price? you betcha, and i only find fault in back spin drills…don’t see why they fly into the net so easily…but i just do a normal setting for them then. otherwise, you will surely get better with this item and it is easily assembled and user friendly!

Review on February 25, 2010
Just got it today, played with it for an hour. No problems at all. Digital control is great, but the real gem is you can set to random POSITION and random SPEED, which is much more difficult than playing predictable sweeping robots like SuperMaster or older Newgy 1040. Imagine shot goes long left with high topspin, another short right with low topspin, etc, randomly. Pretty realistic opponent. How does it work? 1) First you choose top or back spin (with or without sidespin). 2) Then you choose either fixed position or run in random oscillation mode and/or random speed mode. I recommend starting off with fixed position to get used to robot. Then set random POSITION. Play with that a bit. Then turn on random SPEED too. Now it’s a strong unpredictable opponent! There is no paddle movement to give you hint. The head oscillation is completely silent, so you can’t “game” the system by trying to hear how many clicks it turned. The top speed on this thing is pretty fast. They say 75mph at the “30” setting. I set it to 2 balls per sec at max speed just to see what happens. Picture a guy covering his head and running for cover…hahaha… And yes, people are correct. The backspin on faster speeds is so incredibly strong, you have to dial back the speed to be realistic. Or setup the head to “serve” the backspin to you. Lastly, make sure you buy the Catch Net II + Side Nets for $80. Well worth money since it has funnel at bottom for easy refills. It took me 30 mins to put together, a bit confusing. But once done, nice product. If Rumplestiltskin asked for firstborn or Newgy 1050, I think I’d hand him firstborn.

Review by jyan on February 28, 2010
Just got 2 days ago, and am completely sold on new digital control panel. Reasons why you should drop your paycheck on this robot:

1) Programmable drill mode. The flexibility of the built-in drills are amazing! For example, one topspin drill is a sequence of 4 shots: Left short slow, Left long fast, Right short slow, Right long fast. Set to run drill either by total number of balls thrown, total minutes played, or run forever. How many under $1000 robots do you know can do that?

2) Programmable Oscillation. Oscillation control on the 1050 is effortless. Just choose the L/R sweep range at control panel.

3) Random Oscillation and Random Speed. A truly tough random opponent, except for one thing — drills cannot alternate between topspin or backspin since it’s not controlled by digital controller. So not completely human, but pretty darn good as your practice partner. And don’t forget it’s a single-wheel design. Not being able to toss you no-spin balls is no big deal when the flip side is being able to improve footwork on falkenberg drills. When you are serious enough to worry about no-spin balls, you can easily sell your 1050 for good price and upgrade to something like the dual-wheel AMDT TW2700-08 for $1350 with control panel adjustable head tilt. Drool.